Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
by huggaholic
Summary: In 2008, Raven Black is stabbed, but she wakes up in the 1980's. She finds Alex Drake, who is dead in her time. Can she find a way back?
1. Chapter 1

**I do not own any of the Ashes to Ashes series. If I did, do you think I'd be writing fanfic about it?**

Fifteen year old Raven Black stepped back, and her back hit the alley wall. There was no escaping now. No way to evade the tall, threatening man that was coming closer and closer to her. She cursed that her mother was in the police force. The only reason he was cornering her was that her mother had got him put in prison. Now that he was out, he wanted revenge. Something that would hurt the woman for a long, long time. The death of her only child.

As he advanced, Raven panicked, her mind sprinting as fast as she wished that she could run. She wanted to scream, but her voice had stopped working. The man's hand went into his pocket, pulling out something that glinted in the alleyway's murky half-light. A knife. Raven gulped. There was no way that she could see that she would survive this encounter unscathed.

"Please, please...don't kill me." She begged, her voice barely above a whisper. Her chestnut eyes turning hazel as she stared at the knife. The man chuckled, the noise grating against Raven's ears.

"Why shouldn' I? Your bitch of a muvva wrecked my life. So I'm gunna wreck 'ers. See ya in 'ell." With that he plunged the knife deep into Raven's stomach. He twisted it round, then tugged it out. Pain like nothing Raven had ever experienced before seared through her stomach. Her brain forgot how to function, her vocal chords lost, so she couldn't even gasp. Her hands, twitching slightly, made their unsteady way to her abdomen, and came back sticky and wet, covered in a hot, red liquid. Blood. She stared at the filthy man in front of her, eyes wide, mouth open slightly. She staggered, and crumpled onto the pavement.

_They say that you're life flashes in front of your eyes as you die. That you see a bright light. Or you see all your dead relatives, welcoming you to the afterlife. It's a load of bull. All I remember is a silent, terrible darkness, and obliterating pain. Then the pain stops suddenly, and I start to be able to hear again. Distant footsteps, cars, everyday stuff. Then I see colours. So many, like a technicolour parade, just for me. Then the colours fade away, and it's dark again. I can feel something underneath me, a hard, cold surface. What happened to me comes flooding back. I was stabbed. Was I in a morgue? Then I remember, there are no cars in a morgue. My eyes flicker open, and then I realise I'm lying on paving slabs. The ones I collapsed on. I stand up, unsteady on my feet. I look down at myself. There is no stab wound. Not even a rip in the fabric of my t-shirt. I'm still wearing all my clothes, pumps, jeans, t-shirt, all black. The only colour on me is the emerald ring on the middle finger of my right hand. The ring my mother brought on my birthday. One emerald, with a small black gem each side, on a silver band. The only item of clothing that I am not wearing is my jacket. I remember that I dropped it when I started to run from the man. I wonder where the man went. I glance around. Something is different about the alleyway. It's cleaner, newer. Where am I? I walk out of the alley and look around, still dizzy and unsteady on my feet. I thank fate that I wore pumps today. I look around, careful to move my head slowly to avoid feeling any more dizzy. Then I see a woman I recognise, which is impossible. Alex Drake, who was shot in the head a few months ago, pronounced dead at the scene. For a dead woman, she looks very alive. She has a perm, and is wearing things that I have only associated with the Eighties. So, Sam Tyler wasn't mad. He did go back. She spots me, and gasps, recognising me from the last time we met. The man that is with her swivels his head to see what she is looking at. I stagger my way over, only recognising him when we are standing two feet apart._

_"DCI Gene Hunt..." I know I am swaying as if drunk, but my head hurts so much I do not care. "Alex...Alex, I was stabbed..." My world starts to go dark._

_"Raven, Raven, come on, stay with me..." My vision goes dark, and she is the last person I see._

**What do you think? Please review. Thank you!**


	2. Chapter 2

Alex couldn't believe her eyes. Raven was from 2008, not 1981. Then again, so was she. She remembered that she had also fainted at the sight of Gene Hunt, when she had first seen him, after she was shot in the head. She had been dressed as a prostitute then, she how come Raven was still in her own clothes? She pushed these thoughts aside as Raven had collapsed to the pavement.

Gene had been quite amused when Alex told him her and the girl had came from the same place.

"Whta, so I'm a sort of legen' there, am I Bolly?" She had ignored his comment, and had forced him to carry Raven's unconcious form to her home, and she layed Raven on the bed. She tried to make him leave, but he had refused, so she had, at least, kept him away from the bedroom, where the two women would talk about Raven's sudden appearence.

Raven woke up and saw Alex's face looking at her with concern. Raven shot up.

"Alex, in 2008, I was stabbed. And then I woke up here, and now I can't get back, Alex." She dissolved into tears, Alex cradelling her in her arms. Eventually, Raven was calm enough to tell her what had happened.

"Alex, your body was found. I'm really, really sorry Alex, but you're dead." Alex looked too shocked to say anything. "You were sent to the hospital, and you were in a coma, but you died."

"So, um, how's Molly?" Alex would find solace as long as her own daughter was still alive and happy.

"She took it pretty badly. She cried non-stop for a while, now she just is back to normal, but she doesn't do very much. Doesn't leave the house much at all. They found Layton, and he's been put in prison." Raven touched Alex's hand. The older woman appeared not to have noticed. She was dead. There was no getting back to her daughter, no chance of seeing her ever again. She decided to bottle her emotions, for the time being, and try to understand why the teenager was sent back here, in her own clothes.

"What do you remember about that day, Raven?" She asked. Raven relayed everything that had happened that day, including when she woke up. They were both puzzled, after about an hour of talking about their own experiences. Raven's hand went to her pocket. There was a piece of paper inside. She pulled it out, and stared at it. It had her name on, and grades. These were the 1980's equivelent grades to her own GCSE results. Still stunned, she showed Alex.

"Alex, do you think I might be dead?" Alex could only dumbly nod. Raven had to build a life in the past, just like Alex, and had no chance of going back.

* * *

Gene sat in Alex's living room, fidgeting. He hated not knowing exactly what was going on, and ight now there was a nutter just like Drake in the other room. Suddenly, the women entered the room, Raven wearing new, more suitable clothes. She gave a slight smile and a nod to Gene.

"Gene, this is Raven, or Rae, as she prefers, Black." Alex said, introducing them. "Rae is my neice, and her mother has just died, so she's come to live with me. She's finished school, and wants a job. Any ideas?" She said, smirking slightly. She knew Gene was desperate for another officer in his team.

"Alright, she can work for me. But no screw-ups Bolly, or it'll not just be 'er neck on the line. Yourn too."

Raven smiled to herself. This, she decided, was going to be fun.


	3. Chapter 3

Later on in the day, and Raven was by herself. Alex had gone down to Luigi's with the team, although she was reluctant to leave Raven. Eventually, she was convinced that Raven would be fine for a while.

She sat crossed legged on Alex's bed. She had found some more things in her pockets, and she laid them on the bed in front of her. Besides the GCSE-equivalents, there was a passport, a birth certificate and a photo. She read the documents carefully. According to them, she was sixteen, a legal adult. So it was fine that she could work. She took a while working up the nerve to look at the photo. After a while, when she could delay it no more, she studied the picture. It was a typical 1970's photo, in colour. She looked a long time at the faces on the paper. Then she tossed it aside and lay on the bed, sobs racking through her body.

It was a picture of her and her mother, in 70's dress, happy in a park picnicking. Something Raven had never done. Never would be able to do. At least, not with her mother. The woman who had resented her birth, hated that she could no longer only focus on herself, on her career. Raven hated that her mother never made time for her, preferring to cast her off to a childminder, to school, clubs, anything, as long as Catherine Black didn't have to do anymore then sign on the dotted line. Raven wondered how long it would take to find her body. If her mother would care. Raven had no idea why her mother had kept her after she was born, instead of casting her off to a children's home. Filled with these troubled thoughts, Raven slipped into an uneasy slumber.

That night, she dreamed. Not dreams of things that were impossible, but things about her life. After she had exited. She watched from the sidelines as a man found her limp and blood-soaked body. She watched as the ambulance crew covered her with a sheet, and drove off. She watched in the morgue, as her body was examined, then shut away. She watched her mother in their home, watching the news. She watched as her mother screamed at the TV when it flashed a picture of her dead body, and she watched as her mother, her unloving mother, sobbed over her still form in the cold morgue, her uneven breathes showing as clouds tumbling out, her tears running through her make-up, leaving black lines running down her cheeks.

Raven woke up to the dark silence. She sat up, wiping her tear-stained face, as she remembered the dream. Was it real? Why did her mother only show her affection towards her daughter now, when it was too late? She shuddered at the sudden cold, and she collected the documents and the photo in the darkness and shut them in a drawer. And after that, she locked her heart away, where no-one could see its delapitated state. She grabbed some blankets and padded into the front room, shivering despite the fact it was summer. She curled up under the blankets on the sofa, and shuddered her way into sleep.

* * *

At Luigi's, the team were sitting around a table, laughing and joking. At a lull, Alex cleared her throat and announced,

"My sister has died, and now my niece is staying with me." At this, the team gave their condolences, and Alex continued, "Her name is Rae Black, and she's going to be working at the station with our team." Gene nodded, verifying this fact. They started to ask questions about her and what she would be doing, all seeming eager to meet her. Eventually, Alex glanced at the clock and gasped. It was later then she thought. She had promised to be back at the flat an hour ago. She hurridly said good-bye, and rushed back home.

When she got in, she spied Raven sleeping on the sofa. She reached out and touched her forehead, and gasped. Raven was stone-cold, as if she was dead. She quickly checked her pulse, not knowing what to expect, and not knowing what she would do if she couldn't find a heartbeat. Her fingers found Raven's marble wrist, and was relieved to feel the steady beat of life under her fingertips. She wondered why her body was so icy, afterall, it was not from lack of heat. There were four blankets cocooning the teenager, and the air in the living room was humid. Raven didn't look ill, just pale, which she had always done. Her skin contrasted dramatically with the shock of jet black hair that went just past her shoulders, messy with uneasy sleep. _Maybe_, Alex thought, _it has something to do with the fact that she's dead in her time. But wouldn't that mean I'd be cold too?_ She shrugged off the thought, and went to her bed.

**What did you think? Sorry I haven't updated in a while-I've been really busy!**


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